This invention relates to wheel chairs and, more particularly, to push rod mechanisms for propelling wheel chairs by the occupant of the wheel chair.
Conventional wheel chairs, foldable type or rigid frame type, are generally provided with hand rims that are attached to the rear wheels of the chair. These hand rims are used by the occupant of the wheel chair to propel the chair. If the occupant of the wheel chair has full use of his hands and arms, these hand rims provide a satisfactory means of propelling a wheel chair. However, if the occupant of the wheel chair has restricted or little or no use of his hands, the conventional push rim does not provide a satisfactory means even though such a person may be able to use his arms and/or his shoulder muscles to provide a force sufficient to propel a wheel chair. On many wheel chairs the hand rims do carry short push rods to help the occupant propel the wheel chair. However, these rods are short and not optimumly positioned.
Various other different propelling mechanisms have been devised to provide occupants of wheel chairs who have little or no use of their hands but do have use of their arm and/or shoulder muscles with a means to propel their wheel chairs. Most of these prior art mechanisms known to the applicant use large single levers and many have relatively complicated mechanical linkages to provide the proper motion for the lever.
This invention provides occupant operated push rod apparatus to propel a wheel chair. The various embodiments of this invention provide mechanical advantages over the conventional push rims or push with the short fixed knobs and, in addition, the occupant of the wheel chair does not have to grasp the push rods to propel the wheel chair. All the occupant of a wheel chair needs to do to use the push rod apparatus of this invention is to apply a forward or reverse force on the push rods to move the wheel chair in the forward or reverse direction, respectively.